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Topic: Help and Advice Needed (Read 3777 times)

After reading quite a lot throughout these forums, I thought I would finally take the time to ask for some help. What I really liked about my time reading through the forums here is the help and understanding the more expert members here have of new people needing advice.I recently bought a breadmaker, and even though I bought it mainly for bread, I always had in it in my mind to use it to make my favourite food, which is pizza of course

Anyway, I have made at a guess about 30 pizzas from using the machine so far, and even though they are ok, I want to improve them.

The 2 pizzas I mainly want to make are a 12" ny style and a 12" american style.

I have been using the recipe that came with the breadmaker, which is as follows:

About a 2 hour program on the breadmaker. Cooked at 500°F for about 7-10 mins on a pizza tray.

Very simple recipe compared to most here. And I have just sort of being shaping it to the type of pizza I want, which no doubt is the wrong thing to do.

I also tried a recipe here for a 12" lehmann style. I can't remember what one it was now as I have looked at so many here. I believe it had about 62% hydration though, which is more water than my normal recipe, and the dough was quite wet and sticky when it came out of the breadmaker, and needed a lot of flour on it. And when I rolled it out and cooked it, it was way too thin, and was basically a cracker crust pizza.

For both recipes I have used a rolling pin to shape the dough. I have tried by hand after watching the videos of how to do it, but the dough seems to rip easily and not stretch like I see in the videos. It seems to shrink back into shape and go wrinkly and it takes a lot of effort to get it into shape.

My main problem with the pizzas I have made is not the taste, but the texture. They are not light enough, they are very doughy and stiff. The ends of the slices sort of curl up instead of being quite flexible and having gravity make them fold downwards.

I think that's everything. I expect using a breadmaker is the main problem, but if I can get it better, then I would like to try.

I doubt that using a bread machine is your main problem. I've made 100's of excellent pies using the dough cycle of mine and have never been tempted to do it any other way. I use the Lehmann calculator, King Arthur bread flour (sometimes a mix of 2/3 KABF and 1/3 KA All purpose), 63% hydration, 0.1 thickness factor, 3 day refrigerated rise, Fibrament stone in a 550 oven (preheated for 1 hour AFTER the oven comes to temp), and an approximate 5-6 minute bake. Flour and water are weighed on my digital scale. NEVER a rolling pin. Let dough sit at room temp for 2 hours before shaping.

Without knowing which specific Lehmann dough formulation you used, it is hard to say what caused your dough to behave as it did. Also, there are so many different models of bread machines, with so many different possible cycles, that it can be very difficult to diagnose problems. However, I can assure you that it is possible to use a bread machine to make a good pizza dough, and we have several members who have done so quite successfully. Art, who posted as I was composing this post, is one of them. In your case, it might help to know how exactly you used your bread machine to prepare the dough and also whether you cold fermented the dough in the refrigerator before using. For background purposes as you consider a response, you might take a look at the following posts that describe my use of a bread maker to make a NY style dough (Lehmann NY style): Reply 51 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,576.msg5486.html#msg5486 and Reply 260 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,576.msg17113.html#msg17113. As you will see from the above posts, and especially from Reply 260, I came to the conclusion that it was a good idea with my bread maker to use a considerably shorter knead time than my machine normally uses. Rather than trying to reprogram my machine to use a shorter knead time, I elected just to watch the dough and to remove it from the machine when it reached the desired condition. I see in your case that your machine program is about 2 hours. That is considerably more than I have used on my machine (preheat time plus a 6-9 minute knead).

Under ordinary circumstances, there should be no need to use a rolling pin to roll out a NY Lehmann style dough. Where some people often go astray, especially new or inexperienced home pizza makers, is that they re-shape or re-ball or re-knead the dough just as they are getting ready to shape and stretch it out to the desired size. Doing that only reorients the gluten structure and produces an overly elastic, or "bucky", dough that resists shaping and usually results in the dough tearing and forming holes.

In your case, for a NY style pizza, you might also want to consider using a pizza stone to bake the pizza instead of a pizza tray, which I assume is a flat perforated or nonperforated pan of some sort, hopefully a dark, anodized pan or a pan seasoned and darkened from long time use. A stone surface is the classic method used to make the NY style. A pan will work but the results generally won't be the same when the pizzas are baked under the same oven conditions.

In the recipe you posted, is the water stated as a volume measurement using a metric cup?

Thanks for the help.I'm not sure what you mean by stated as a volume measurement by a metric cup, I just wrote out the recipe as in the book =)

I'm glad to hear that it is possible to make a good dough in a bread machine. That means I can really put some effort into getting this right now lol I will read though the posts you have given me.

I have not yet cold fermented the dough no. I just get it out of the machine and use it straight away like it says in the breadmaker book.This is how the dough cycle works : Rest 20-40mins > Knead 10-15mins > Rise 1hr 20-30mins There is no heating used in the dough cycle that I know of.

I'm happy to try and answer any other questions you have. Hopefully if I get the dough right I can shape the dough without the rolling pin, as that is how I'd like to do it anyway.

I attempted to convert the recipe you posted and thought, erroneously as it turned out, that maybe I wasn't using the correct water quantity. When I converted your recipe, using one ml = 1 gram, I got the following:

The hydration is on the low side but I believe that it should work in a bread maker. I would think, however, that the dough is likely to be on the stiff side and may not have a nice open and airy crumb in the finished crust.

Most bread makers that I am aware of provide heat during the preheat and rise cycles but not during the knead cycle. The heat that is imparted to the dough during the knead cycle is the heat of friction produced by the paddles as they knead the dough. There is at least one member who was able to disable the heat feature of his machine.

You're right. 54% does seem quite low. Do you think that is what was causing the problem of the finished pizza being very stiff, doughy and unflexible? Do you think I should try the recipe you used in your bread machine for the ny style, or should we try and adapt the breadmaker's original one? Maybe the fact that they seem to recommend quite a low hydration level was why when I tried the recipe from here it was very watery.

You're right. 54% does seem quite low. Do you think that is what was causing the problem of the finished pizza being very stiff, doughy and unflexible? Do you think I should try the recipe you used in your bread machine for the ny style, or should we try and adapt the breadmaker's original one? Maybe the fact that they seem to recommend quite a low hydration level was why when I tried the recipe from here it was very watery.

3d85,

Assuming you weighed the flour and water, I wouldn't be surprised if the results you got were because of the low hydration. If you otherwise liked the pizza, you could simply increase the amount of water to something that is close to the rated absorption value for your flour. I gather from your posts that you are not in the U.S. but are using a local bread flour. In the U.S., a bread flour will typically have a rated absorption of around 62%. On that basis, the amount of water you would need is 139.5 grams.

I have never experienced any problems using my bread maker to make a Lehmann NY style dough with a hydration commensurate with the rated absorption value of the flours I use. Even Art, who gave an example of one of the dough formulations he has used in the past, at Reply 8 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,5931.msg51034.html#msg51034, uses a fairly high hydration. In fact, it is a bit higher than the rated absorption values for the two flours (all-purpose and bread flour) that he uses as his blend.

Going forward, you can try to improve your bread machine recipe along the lines suggested above, use one of the Lehmann versions from one of my posts, or simply try Art's dough formulation, or another one that he might suggest as a better choice based on his more recent experience. As a completely different approach, you could try making a hand-kneaded version of one of the Lehmann-based doughs, including Art's, and see if you get the desired results. Such a "test" might also help ascertain whether your machine is doing its job properly from the standpoint of producing the quality of dough you are looking for. If not, there may be ways of modifying use of your bread maker to get better results. Fortunately, for Art, with his machine, he doesn't have to do anything to it. Remember, also, that just as it is often necessary to tweak the ingredients when making a dough in a stand mixer, food processor, or even by hand, you may have to do the same thing with your bread maker.

I think firstly I will try your first suggestion which would be to keep the original recipe, but change the hydration to 62%. Then move on if that doesn't seem to work.I will be trying it out on Friday this week, so I'll be sure to come here afterwards and let you know how it went.

The dough came out very wet and sticky, and was quite an effort to get it out of the breadpan. It needed loads of flour on the work surface to get it to stop sticking. But also, after doing that I tried shaping it without a rolling pin for the first time, and couldn't get it to stretch to anywhere near 11". Which I found very strange. I even tried as a last resort to use the rolling pin and still couldn't get it to 11", and if I had would have been an extremely thin pizza.

I expect I messed up big time somewhere, but I'm not sure where. I'm determined to get better though.

Hydration problems are almost always fixable so don't get discouraged. In your latest dough batch did you pull the dough out during the knead cycle or did you let the dough go through the full machine cycle including preheat, knead and rise?

Also, what model of bread maker and what brand of bread flour are you using?

I thought you might be using the Allinson strong white bread flour. So, that shouldn't be the source of the problem.

However, in re-reading your posts to find clues as to what happened, I noticed for the first time that you changed the dough batch weight from 365.93 grams (12.91 ounces) to 282.89 grams (9.98 ounces), a reduction of almost 23%. It's possible that the 10-15 minute knead time was excessive for the smaller dough batch size and the bread maker could have overkneaded the dough to the point where the dough broke down (called the "letdown" stage). When that happens, the dough can become very sticky and slack and almost impossible to work with or resurrect. So, you might want to go back to your original dough batch weight but with the higher hydration. On that basis, the dough formulation would look like this:

It may still be necessary to make hydration changes but we won't know for sure until you re-try the recipe as modified above.

I also noticed in re-reading your posts that you were interested in making 12" pizzas but it was not clear what size pizzas you were making with your original recipe for your particular bread maker. Was it 12" also?

I've read through the post you mentioned, and I think that seems to describe what happened very well indeed.

I changed the formulation using the dough calculator to make an 11" dough with the percentages you gave me, and the original breadmaker recipe I had did not say what size pizza it was for. Whenever I used it, I just stretched it to the size of the tray (about 11-12") but it was quite a medium to thick crust pizza then. Maybe the breadmaker, like you said, can only make dough that size or larger.

My next test then will be to do as you mentioned and use the original dough weight with the higher hydration.

Oh, also, do you think the quite large amount of oil in the recipe has any effect? Would that change what hydration percentage I should use?

I have made quite a few doughs with a hydration/oil combination similar to that as reflected in the above table and, yes, the two have to be balanced against each other because of their overall effect on the "wetness" of the dough, but the combination should be workable.

I used the last recipe you gave me with the hydration at 58% because of the high amount of oil, and it came out perfect.I even managed to shape the pizza without a rolling pin, took a while, but I'm sure with practice I'll get better at it.

The crust was extremely light and airy and tasted great.

Now I seem to have the basics coming together, I can start looking at all the other great recipes on this forum. =)

Thanks again Peter and Art for all your help. I greatly appreciate it. Hopefully I'll find a time to stop being lazy and get my digital camera to take a picture of one of the pizzas.

But, guess what? When I gave you the last dough formulation, I forgot the sugar. I corrected the omission in Reply 8, just in case you would like to try that version sometime, but I did not amend the dough formulation you used in Reply 13. However, if you decide at some time to try the version in Reply 13 with sugar, the dough formulation looks like this:

As you can see, adding the sugar back into the formulation does not change the values all that much.

In the U.S., using the above formulation to make a roughly 11" pizza would produce a pizza that is called an "American" style, along the lines sold by Papa John's and Domino's, both of which are in the UK also. If you like that style, you might check out this thread: http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,6758.0.html. It would be interesting to see what a PJ bread maker clone version would look like.

It would also be interesting sometime to see some photos of your pizzas.

I am again not happy with how my pizza making is going. I still seem to very often be having the same problems, and am not satisfied with how my pizzas are turning out. I'm not a good cook, but still feel I can get better at this, and have been working at it for months with limited success.So, I've decided to do a long detailed post containing a list of my main problems, the recipe I'm using and my step-by-step routine of making the pizza, so people can here can tell me everything I'm doing wrong (be kind though please )

First of all, my main 3 problems with my pizzas:

1. The dough seems too stiff. It's near impossible to shape without a rolling pin, it just shrinks back to shape otherwise. And trying to stretch it gets the base very uneven, and after time of trying to get it right, there will eventually be holes ripped in the dough. So a rolling pin is the only option, which I am not happy with. It's not light and elastic as the doughs in videos on youtube are. This also seems to be the case when it's cooked. It looks and feels stiff, almost like a fake plastic pizza or something.

2. The pizza is slightly too chewy for me. This is sort of related to the first problem of the stiffness of the dough I expect.

3. The pizza seems very dry. In 2 ways actually. The inside seems sort of dry, not very moist at all. Which seems to add to the chewyness in my opinion. It doesn't melt in the mouth in any way. But also, it seems dry on the crust and bottom, and my mouth feels extremely dry after eating it.

I think the reason you are having problems is that you are letting your recipe dictate how long the dough is left to rise, when you should instead be visually judging how much volume expansion has happened with the dough and using that to guide you. From my calculations your dough needs to rise much more than you are letting it. You could up your hydration too, but your main problem is that you are using severely underproofed dough. When starting out I found that a visual clue and a room temperature rise was the easiest way to know when to use the dough. Eventually you can move on to refrigerated doughs or hybrid rise doughs once you get the hang of this.

When the bread machine is totally finished with its kneading process pull the dough out and put it on your countertop. If you prefer to leave it in your bread machine for this initial rise thats fine. It helps to use a tall skinny container to judge how much it has risen. Try letting it come close to a double in size (anywhere between 1/2 way to a double and a full double is fine). After this initial rise make your dough balls and let them double in size again before you make your pizza. This double rising method I am describing should help your final texture and flavor a lot, as well as make it much easier to stretch out the dough into a pizza skin.

You might want to keep track of what temperature you room was and how long it took for the dough to be ready for baking. If you want to up the yeast amount in your recipe this process will go faster next time, or you could slow it down by using less yeast. Moving your dough from hot or cold spots in your room will also let you adjust how fast this rising process goes.

My understanding from the beginning is that you started with a dough recipe that came with your breadmaker and that you were following the recipe's instructions to make a dough that could be used within less than 2 hours after making. If my understanding is incorrect, it would help to know the proper instructions that came with the recipe.

My first instinct after reading your last post is to suggest making a hand kneaded version of the dough formulation you last used. It seems to me that 15-30 minutes of machine kneading for a roughly 13 ounce dough ball is far too much. Making a hand kneaded dough successfully would go a long way toward telling us if your breadmaker is a possible source of your problems, particularly since you changed the dough formulation along the way. If you want instructions on how to hand knead a dough such as the one you last made, let me know. For this option, I would use very warm water and a longer rise time, along the lines suggested by scott r. Tom Lehmann says that you need two hours of room-temperature fermentation as a minimum to get a usable short-time dough (see his post at the PMQ Think Tank at http://thinktank.pmq.com/viewtopic.php?p=45476#45476). I personally think that that is on the short side but you used only 1 hour 20 min-30 min. Depending on your room temperature, I would perhaps shoot for at least three hours, or until the dough has experienced substantial volume expansion. From my reading, most short-term doughs produced commercially on an emergency basis are fermented between 2-4 hours.

My second thought is to continue to use your breadmaker just as you have been using it but yank the dough from the machine after about 6 minutes of knead time. I would then let the dough rise at room temperature for a decent period of time, again along the lines suggested by scott r. This option might also tell us whether your breadmaker is part of the problem. As scott r noted, you can also consider raising the hydration. Most recently, you had a problem with a 58% hydration dough and previously you found 62% hydration to be too high, so you might consider using 60%.

The amount of yeast you last used, 0.70% IDY, is about the value recommended by Tom Lehmann for an "emergency" type of dough such as you have been making. From what I can tell, it looks like you increased the yeast from its previous value, about 0.50%, on your own.

I also think it helps to keep this matter and your expectations in context. Short-time or "emergency" doughs will not produce crusts have the same characteristics as crusts made from doughs that have been allowed to ferment for much longer times, whether at room temperature or in the refrigerator. You will invariably get better crust color, flavor, aroma and texture with the longer fermented doughs. However, the decision is up to you based on your personal tastes and circumstances.

Thanks for all the great advice as always. I think the first thing I will try is scott's suggestion of removing the dough from the machine, and letting it rise a second time. Just to see if this makes a difference, especially in shaping the dough.I will be trying it tomorrow, so will let you know how I get on